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66th Meeting of the Meteoritical Society: Awards A5 Barringer Medal Citation for Graham Ryder Graham Ryder, an extraordinary lunar scientist whose One of Graham’s lasting contributions to the community accomplishments revolutionized our understanding of lunar of lunar scientists was the work he conducted in Houston for processes and history, passed away on January 5, 2002 as a over a decade, preparing new catalogs of the lunar samples result of complications from cancer of the esophagus. In his returned by the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions. The lunar few years studying the lunar samples, Graham made sample catalogs not only described the nature of over 20,000 fundamental discoveries and came up with new insights that individually numbered lunar samples, but collated all the changed the way we look at the Moon and its history. published data (with full bibliographic references) into a handy Graham was born on January 28, 1949 in Shropshire, compendium that both guided existing projects and spurred England. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Wales new research throughout the 1980s. In the waning phases of his (Swansea) (1970) and his Ph.D. from Michigan State work on the massive Catalog of Apollo 15 Rocks (Curatorial University (1974), specializing in the petrology of igneous Branch Publication 72, JSC 20787, 1985), Graham and I rocks. He did post-doctoral work with John Wood’s group at worked together on a study initiative on the geology of the the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and was Apollo 15 landing site. As part of that effort, he came to visit subsequently employed by Northrup Services Inc. in the me in Flagstaff for a week in 1985. We spent part of that week Lunar Curatorial Facility (NASA Johnson Space Center). together with Dave Scott, the Apollo 15 mission commander, Since 1983, he had been a staff scientist at the Lunar and and Gordon Swann, the mission Geology PI, and reviewed the Planetary Institute in Houston. videotapes of the EVAs from that mission. Spending those days Graham started working in lunar science around the time living and working on the Moon (as near as we could come to that the initial study of Apollo samples had been completed. it) reawakened in both Graham and myself a latent interest in With the cream of preliminary work nicely skimmed, making the philosophy and practice of field geology, an issue that was fundamental advances in this field required not only technical becoming important as part of a projected “Return to the excellence but imaginative insight. Graham provided both of Moon” program. Graham began to devour works on the history these qualities in abundance. His first work with lunar of geology, particularly the excellent books by Martin J. S. samples was as part of the “Imbrium Consortium,” a study Rudwick and James Secord on the early history of geology, and group led by John Wood with the aim of identifying ejecta specifically, the subdivision of the lower Paleozoic in the from the Imbrium basin, a prime sampling target of at least England-Wales borders, near his beloved Shropshire. Graham two Apollo missions. Graham’s work on the petrology of enjoyed discussing arcane stratigraphic boundary problems in highland breccias was exemplary. He was the first to the British Silurian as much as he did last week’s episode of recognize what is still our best example of impact melt from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. the Imbrium basin—samples 15445 and 15455. Noting the As Graham continued to explore the early history of the unusual, Mg-rich character of these melts, he developed, with Moon, he became intrigued by the unusual clustering ages of Wood, a model for the crust of the Moon that became more lunar impact melts—virtually all of them date to around 3.8 mafic with depth and related this crustal model to samples Gyr. Although the idea of a “cataclysm” on the Moon actually derived from both the Imbrium (Apollo 15) and Serenitatis dates to an influential paper published by Gerry Wasserburg (Apollo 17) impacts. This paper still stands as an outstanding and coworkers in 1974, the idea had lain fallow for 20 years, example of strong, imaginative science—a tribute to the post- a problem without explanation, but one which no one seemed Apollo “synthesis” stage of lunar studies. to worry about very much. In 1976, Graham (with Jeff Taylor) noted, in yet another Graham did. He published a provocative statement of the paper ahead of it time, that a then-current lunar science cataclysm in Eos and unleashed a debate in the planetary dogma—that mare volcanism began after the last of the major community the effects of which are still with us (and NASA’s basins had formed—was not only not required by the future exploration plans) to this day. Graham noted that, even observational data, but in fact, was contraindicated by it. They after 20 years of searching, virtually no impact melts had been carefully catalogued a wide variety of lunar sample evidence found in the lunar samples older than 3.9 Gyr, even though we for ancient mare volcanism on the Moon, from clasts of mare supposedly went to a number of highland sites that should have basalt in highland breccias to augitic pyroxenes found in yielded melt ejecta from many different near side basins. Either fragmental breccias from North Ray crater at the Apollo 16 we failed to sample any events but a few, or our understanding site. Ryder and Taylor argued that volcanism on the Moon of early lunar history was wrong. And, if we had gotten the began well before the last basins, a concept now widely early history of the Moon wrong, what did we really know accepted and graced with the non-euphonious term about the early planets in general? (All of our impact “cryptomaria.” This paper helped to establish a lifelong Ryder chronologies ultimately tie back to the lunar example, where tradition—the insistence of observational evidence’s we have radiometric ages of rocks from a [more or less] known superiority to theoretical argument. context.) A6 66th Meeting of the Meteoritical Society: Awards For Graham, the lunar cataclysm was an observational always a puckish, sly humor that tempered his razor-sharp fact, not an arcane theory. He was unmoved by theoretical tongue. You could be exasperated by an encounter with objections to it; he believed in looking at data and deciding on Graham, but you could never stay angry with him. the scientific validity of something on the basis of its The only Lunar Science Conference that Graham missed correspondence to the known facts. The fact that models was in 1983—the 14th LPSC. He was here in Germany could not account for a cataclysm bothered him not one working with Dieter Stöffler at the University of Münster. whit—models have to be consistent with data, not the other Nevertheless, this was the year that the first lunar meteorite was way around. discovered and Graham had already had a good look at it. Ever Graham was interested in all aspects of the Moon and fertile with new and innovative ideas, he wrote an abstract avidly read and digested papers in many different areas. proposing that it had been ejected from the Moon as a result of Although a petrologist by training, he eventually became an impact that created the crater Giordano Bruno, a very conversant enough with trace-element geochemistry to do his prominent, fresh ray crater on the lunar far side. Unfortunately, own analyses in this field. Graham and I knew each other he did not have money to fly to Houston and attend the from the time that I was a graduate student, and he was always conference, so his paper was presented in absentia by Dieter on keen to understand photographic evidence and remote- Thursday morning, March 17, 1983. sensing data. He could discuss (and argue!) on all sorts of In the special session on Lunar Meteorite 81005, Dieter topics remote from his own discipline, from dynamical issues Stöffler gave Graham’s paper on the meteorite and Giordano of lunar origin to the effects of “space weathering” on the Bruno as its source crater. Dieter began by announcing, regolith. When it came to the Moon, Graham was indeed a “Today I have the privilege of being the voice of Graham “Renaissance Man.” Ryder. .” Such a wide ranging intellect could scarcely be contained I wrote Graham in Germany recounting this event, and I solely to lunar science. Graham loved to apply his knowledge suggested to him that if Dieter was really to be the voice of of planetary science to other problems. He made significant Graham Ryder, he would get up and make sarcastic comments contributions to our understanding of terrestrial impact and after each talk on the program. Graham wrote back: volcanic processes, a natural enough extension of his first “Dieter and I discussed this before he left for the love—the Moon. Graham became involved in the early conference—perhaps he should carry a tape recorder and after controversies on the origin of the KT extinction and was a each talk, he would get up and play the tape ‘Your model is coauthor of one of the initial papers on the petrology and age incomplete!’ or ‘What about the Sm content?—you haven't of the Chicxulub melt breccias. Graham’s extensive experience accounted for that!’ or the ever-popular, ‘That's just stupid!’ with the chemical and physical effects of hypervelocity impact But finally, we decided against it.” helped to establish the impact origin of Chicxulub.

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